Diptych Saint Therese of the Child Jesus with quotation on prayer

Description Diptych Saint Therese of the Child Jesus with quotation on prayer

This very expressive, energetic, even ardent face of Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus is a call to perseverance, to confidence and especially to prayer as the quotation in the right panel suggests.
Prayer really works miracles; but our prayer must for that be a good one. What qualities are required for our prayer to be answered?

For our prayer to be answered we must pray:
- with faith: to believe that we speak to God, infinitely good, powerful and rich; before praying it is good to put yourself in the presence of God or the saint to whom we address our prayer. It is important to realize that in our prayer we are addressing a person who sees us, who listens to us and who loves us. Prayer is a dialogue of love. Prayer is not a return to oneself where one speaks to oneself.
- with humility: our personal experience had to make us realize that we are only weakness, poverty and nothingness; and by contrast we have to consider how God is infinitely great, good, holy and perfect. Thus this gaze focused alternatively on us and on God, encourages us to deliberately turn our heart towards Him.

- with confidence: the hope of being answered does not rest on the value of our prayer, because it will always be imperfect, but on the merits of Christ and his infinite mercy.
Confidence is perhaps the most important element in prayer because it greatly pleases God, it supposes the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity.
- with perseverance: if we are not immediately answered, we should not be discouraged, but continue to pray. God keeps us waiting so that we appreciate more the gift or the grace that He wants to give us. If we were answered immediately, over time we would find it normal, as a thing due to us, or we would be tempted to make little worth of God's gifts.
- things necessary for salvation: obviously, our request must be for our spiritual advantage, for our eternal salvation. But we can be wrong, believing that a particular thing can be useful for our salvation, when actually it is not. In this case God will not hear us in the way we asked but differently and better.

If you wish to deepen the topic of the conditions of a good prayer, we invite you to read the work of Saint Alphonse de Liguori: The great way of prayer , available in french on our shop religious.

Quotation :

Ne nous lassons pas de prier.
La confiance fait des miracles.

Sainte Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus
et de la sainte Face